AIBU to expect that the PCT fund the medication that Steves oncologist has said he needs?

[onlyjoking9329]

having joined the macmillan brain tumour online group i have found someone who lives near me who's husband has the same type/grade of brain tumour as steve,he also has the same consultant. her husband was told he would need radio combined with a chemo drug temozolomide which is exactly the same treatment steve has been told.
she then goes on to say that the local PCT won't fund it and it costs 15K
i am having a little panic here and trying to make contact with this lady to see what happened to her DH treatment, surely the oncologist can't tell us one thing and the PCT refuse to fund it, anyone know anything about this?

McEdam there have always been financial restraints! After all the taxpayer (ie the government) have always paid the bill. Cancer and other specialist drugs would never have come out of GP budgets anyway, and in the past money was mostly saved by waiting lists and other less explicit ways (ie things not being available at all). The main difference at the moment is that everyone is very focused on the bottom line, around staying within agreed budgets, including GPs. There has always been a trade off in terms of what money has been spent on, especially the argument about cost effectiveness - for example the most cost effective thing for a PCT to do is to focus on getting people to stop smoking, but should/could it divert funds from say heart bypasses? In practice this would be impossible to do for a host of reasons, but it was part of the idea of the NHS when it was originally set up.

Oh, and it probably isn't the PCT who will directly fund the treatment if it is NICE approved, because it will be in the hospital's pre-agreed budget. So it just shouldn't be something that onlyjoking has to worry about provided her husband meets the criteria (which the consultant will know).

oh god i hope you dont have to battle with the PCT over this. they were the ones who agreed our care hours, very basic care hours i'd like to add.

and the herts one liked to drag theitr feet over it.

i will try to stop worring about this for now then until we see the consultant then we can ask him.